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Comic Book Easter Eggs – X-Men Pop Culture References!

In this feature, I share with you three comic book “easter eggs.” An easter egg is a joke/visual gag/in-joke that a comic book creator (typically the artist) has hidden in the pages of the comic for readers to find (just like an easter egg). They range from the not-so-obscure to the really obscure. So come check ’em all out and enjoy! Also, click here for an archive of all the easter eggs featured so far! If you want to suggest an easter egg for a future column, e-mail me at bcronin@comicbookresources.com (do not post your suggestion in the comments section!).

Today we take a look at a few Easter Eggs from X-Men where characters’ names are references to other pieces of pop culture, from novels to Star Trek!

First up, we have Candy Southern, introduced in X-Men #31 by Roy Thomas, almost certainly a reference to Terry Southern (with Mason Hoffenberg)’s novel Candy…

Her name was spelled incorrectly the first two times she showed up (I believe an X-Men Index later revealed that fact).

She didn’t have her name spelled correctly until she showed up in X-Men #132…

Next is Polaris, introduced in X-Men #47. Her real name, Lorna Dane, a reference to Richard Doddridge Blackmore’s novel, Lorna Doone: A Romance of Exmoor…

Next is Sauron, a character from J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings…

Now Chris Claremont takes over.

Destiny, Irene Adler, is named after the Sherlock Holmes character from “A Scandal in Bohemia”, “the woman” to Sherlock Holmes…

I don’t know when she first got the last name Adler. I just chose X-Treme X-Men #1 because I KNOW her full name is used in it. She had been called Irene since Uncanny X-Men #170, but I dunno when or who gave her the last name Adler. Anyone?

Finally, in Uncanny X-Men #157, there is this crazy mutinous Shi’ar Admiral who has a problem with a certain Captain…

We later learn his name is Captian K’rk…

Only fitting that the great Trek fan Dave Cockrum did that issue with Claremont.